Deaf Awareness Training & Workshop

Do you have d/Deaf or hard of hearing employees within your organisation?

Do you or your employees have regular contact with customers, clients and colleagues who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing?

Have you made sure that your working environment is deaf-friendly and made all of your stakeholders as comfortable as possible?

If the answer is no to all of the above, how certain are you that you have never interacted with anyone who has, what it is often called as “invisible disability”?

Here are some facts:

According to Action On Hearing Loss charity, approximately 1 in 6 people (approximately 11 million people) in the UK have some kind of deafness

Approximately 900,000 in the UK are severely or profoundly deaf

By 2035, ‘Action On Hearing Loss’ estimate that there will be around 15.6 million people who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing in some way…and that’s 1 in 5 people.

How deaf aware is your own business?

What is Deaf Awareness?

The purpose of deaf awareness is to help you and your organisation to become more deaf aware by being better able to serve d/Deaf and hard of hearing people.

This could be amyone from your employees and colleagues, to your customers and suppliers.

So literally anyone who is involved in your business, however big or small that is.

I want to help you to challenge the attitudes, perceptions and expectations that you may have around deafness via a bespoke deaf awareness training.

Little things like not blocking your mouth, making sure you are in a well-lit room and even not shouting (yes, that’s right!) can make a big different when communicating with d/Deaf people.

What Do You Get Out of a Deaf Awareness Training?

By the end of the training, participants will be able to:

identify solutions within the organisation that can help to improve their interactions with d/Deaf people.

learn better communication skills and the different ways to respond to d/Deaf and hard of hearing people

have better understanding of the topic of deafness, Deaf culture and sign language

improve your customer service experience, which will lead to an increase in retention and loyalty

reduce the risks of any litigation via the Equality Act 2010 (UK) as you are able to comply with the “Reasonable Adjustments that is required

improve the confidence and performance of your deaf employeers due to a better working environment and improve retentions

reduce the likelihood of any frustrations or embarrassments between any stakeholders

certificate of completion to be given to each participant or organisation

Who Can Benefit from Deaf Awareness Training?

This training workshop is for anyone (indivduals, groups or organisations) who interacts with d/Deaf and hard of hearing people and would like to develop a deeper and better understanding on how to interact with them.

By “them”, it could be anything from your employees/colleagues, customers, clients, suppliers, freelancers…literally anyone who is considered to be your stakeholders in your business.

It’s not always obvious whether you have interacted with one or not (and speaking from my own experience, I was never vocal about it and kept quiet).

But it is always a good idea be aware of how you interact once if you are more deaf aware.

Some of the environments that deaf awareness training could be useful for include:

Who Will NOT Benefit from Deaf Awareness Training

If you expect me to do all the work for you in your business after the training

If you are not serious about becoming deaf aware

If you are not in it for the long haul

If you are primary purpose of doing this is to increase your revenue

What Happens During a Typical Workshop?

Each workshop will be customised to suit each audience and your situation. But a typical workshop will include the following:

What is deafness and why deaf awareness is important

the different types and varieties of deafness

Understanding the different perspectives of deafness to help you better understand how it affects individuals

A brief history of deafness

Understanding Deaf culture and sign language

The purpose of lip-reading and tips to make it easy for others to understand you

How to communicate effectively with d/Deaf people

Things you should not say or do to d/Deaf people

Learn from real-life experiences of how I lived through various scenarios

Working with interpreters

Different technologies that can be used to make content more accessible online and offline

Q&A and brainstorming sessions

Why Choose Me (Ahmed Khalifa) from ‘Hear Me Out! [CC]’?

As someone who has lived with various deaf-related challenges through his my entire life, I will offer.

You can learn more about my deafness story here but having been through various experiences as a deaf/hard of hearing person, I’d like to think that I have a good idea of experiencing those tricky environments.

Environments like:

working in a cafe or restaurant

eating in cafes/restaurants with a group of people

working in traditional office environments

travelling in airplanes and cars

attending dozens of networking events and after-parties

attending multiple classrooms and lecture rooms

And as a public speaker, I want to make sure that you and your fellow attendees come away with insightful, practical and holistic view of how you can make your own environment more deaf-friendly.

How Much Does it Cost?

All trainings can be done in-house at your premise. Please note that as I am based in Edinburgh, travel and accommodation are not included within the prices below.

Half-Day (3 hours): from £395 + VAT

Full-Day (6 hours): from £795 + VAT

Why is it “from”? Well this will depend on several factors:

the number of attendees that will is planned to be present

the level of details and customisation that is required to make it as bespoke as possible